In the first episode of Season 3 of I So Appreciate You!, co-hosts Nadege Souvenir and Melanie Hoffert chat with Allison Hohn, executive director of Naturally Minnesota, about what it takes to establish a thriving and equitable ecosystem for food-based entrepreneurs in our state.

Naturally Minnesota is an initiative to support and accelerate Minnesota's ecosystem for food and agriculture entrepreneurship and innovation. Through her work, Allison provides venues for new food and agriculture business owners to connect with like-minded people, find support for their ventures, and learn how to access resources like investment capital.

When establishing a product for distribution, Allison says food entrepreneurs must keep the following things in mind.

“Your product has to taste good, you have to have a good brand and you have to have a point of differentiation.”

Allison also shares her insights on creating greater access and equitable opportunities for entrepreneurs in the food and agriculture space, what she hopes is here to stay after the pandemic shook up the industry, and how someone can take their product from idea to shelf.

Nadege Souvenir:

Welcome everyone to I So Appreciate You!, a raw, funny, and uniquely insightful podcast about the issues and opportunities we all face as values-based leaders and humans. I'm Nadege.

Melanie Hoffert:

And I'm Melanie. We're colleagues at the Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation, and we're friends. When we get together our conversations can go anywhere, especially when bringing a friend or two along for the ride.

Nadege Souvenir:

So we're inviting you to join us and some incredible guests as we explore the challenges and triumphs of people shaking up our community for the better.

Hey everyone, we have got a great episode today. We get to talk to Allison Hohn, who is the executive director of Naturally Minnesota. They're an initiative that supports and accelerates Minnesota's ecosystem for food and agricultural entrepreneurship and innovation.

Melanie Hoffert:

Wow.

Nadege Souvenir:

I mean, that's a lot.

Melanie Hoffert:

It is a lot. Yes.

Nadege Souvenir:

So I feel like it's going to be a jam packed conversation.

Melanie Hoffert:

Yes, yes. We're going to dig in.

Nadege Souvenir:

We are, we are. But now thinking about food and agriculture and then thinking about myself, I guess I'm self-centered, like my annual summer garden.

Melanie Hoffert:

Yes. Let's talk gardening.

Nadege Souvenir:

Yes. Are you a gardener?

Melanie Hoffert:

I am a gardener.

Nadege Souvenir:

How have we not-

Melanie Hoffert:

We haven't had this conversation before. No.

Nadege Souvenir:

Legitimately, guys. I'm not pretending we didn't just make this up. We've never talked about gardening before.

Melanie Hoffert:

Nope. I love, I really do love to garden. It's hard. I mean we could talk about this forever, the watering, the time, the selecting the plants, but what are you growing? What does your garden look like? It must be on your porch or your balcony?

Nadege Souvenir:

Yes. So now that we're in a condo, it's a little urban balcony garden, and I usually try to grow tomatoes and some herbs, but I'll be honest, for some reason I don't have good luck with herbs, so clearly I'm not doing what I'm supposed to be doing and then usually peppers or something. But tomatoes are the big one for me because I like to make fresh salsa.

Melanie Hoffert:

Yes, me too.

Nadege Souvenir:

Peppers and tomatoes.

Melanie Hoffert:

Yes. Well, we're very aligned. Over the years, I've had different gardens. We moved in the last year and now for some reason the gardens were not working at my old house. It might be a soil issue, but I have put tomatoes in these last couple of years and it is just bumper crop. Tomatoes coming out of every single leaf flowering thing. So I have been harvesting tomatoes and then I do flower garden, so I have a lot of flowers and such, but I want to expand this garden, I have to add. Then I also have an herb garden that I put at the side of the house with basil, oregano, all these other different herbs. But our dog, Lyle, we have to monitor him because it is kind of a natural dog pee spot. And so I'm like, listen, and I watch him, but I do not know if Emily, my wife does. So we have to...

Nadege Souvenir:

The next time I come over I'll be like, are these the fresh herbs?

Melanie Hoffert:

Nadege is looking at... She's giving me a look like I'm not eating your salsa. But yeah, salsa is a fun favorite to make, but now you have peppers, so maybe you can spare me a pepper or two.

Nadege Souvenir:

Oh, yeah. I literally don't know what I'm doing this year and I have too many, so actually maybe I could just bring some whenever. But I'm not a good gardener in the sense that I don't know what I'm doing. I probably am not following any of the rules. I forget to water sometimes. I probably haven't changed the soil, and there were years back in the day when I lived in a house that I had tomatoes that were taller than Addison was at a certain age and just out of control. And then there are years where I have two.

Melanie Hoffert:

Right. It's random.

Nadege Souvenir:

Right. So I just make my peace with it. I know that. I know that I probably don't devote the necessary amount of time to produce as much as I reasonably could, but I'm very happy with the little bit that I produce that first tomato of the season.

Melanie Hoffert:

Yes. And the way that they smell, they smell like memories. They smell like summer. They smell like real tomatoes.

Nadege Souvenir:

Good.

Melanie Hoffert:

Yes. Well, goodness. Now I'm really excited to talk to Allison to hear more about food and to dig into what she's doing around all of these food issues in our state.

Nadege Souvenir:

I So Appreciate You is just one of the many initiatives we are working on at the Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation. Want to learn more about how we work to create an equitable, just and vibrant Minnesota? Join our email list by visiting us at spmcf.org/email. While you're there, make sure to check out our blog and follow us on social media.

Melanie Hoffert:

All right, welcome everyone. Today we have a very special and interesting guest, Allison Hohn. Allison, just a little bit of background. Well, before we go there, how are you? Just pause.

Allison Hohn:

I'm doing well today.

Melanie Hoffert:

You're doing well.

Allison Hohn:

It's a rainy gray day here in Saint Paul, but after many, many days of beautiful sunshine.

Melanie Hoffert:

And I just learned that you and my co-host have oura rings, so you know exactly how you're doing.

Allison Hohn:

We do, yes.

Melanie Hoffert:

For our listeners, a little bit about the background about you, but you're the executive director of Naturally Minnesota, or NM, right?

Allison Hohn:

Correct.

Melanie Hoffert:

And in that role, you're really supporting entrepreneurship and innovation and agriculture in the food space. And you are our first guest. We're really digging into this topic, so very excited to talk a little bit more about that. You're also a 2023 40 under 40 recipient from the journal, so congrats on that.

Allison Hohn:

Thank you. It was a surprise. There's always so many incredible leaders in the ecosystem, so you're always like, oh, imposter syndrome comes so on.

Melanie Hoffert:

Yeah. Well, I've never dealt with that. No, just kidding. Yeah. Thank you for normalizing that. And then also before your current role, it looks like you spent 10 years as a food scientist.

Allison Hohn:

I did. I cut my teeth in the classic R&D space here in town.

Nadege Souvenir:

Wow. I'm going to want to know more about that. Yeah,

Melanie Hoffert:

We're going to talk about that. And I want to know more about this last little tidbit that I pulled out. Is it true that you are a race car driver?

Allison Hohn:

I do have an old BMW that I use for autocross and truck driving days.

Melanie Hoffert:

I mean, seriously.

Nadege Souvenir:

One of the things we like to do to just loosen things up is start every interview with three quick questions. So ready?

Allison Hohn:

I was wondering if there was a rapid fire round in here somewhere.

Nadege Souvenir:

Chicken wings or nachos?

Allison Hohn:

Oh, chicken wings.

Nadege Souvenir:

That was definitive. Definitive.

Allison Hohn:

And dry rub chicken wings.

Nadege Souvenir:

Oh yeah, those are really good.

Allison Hohn:

Yeah.

Nadege Souvenir:

Although I would be more torn on... Nachos are good too.

Allison Hohn:

I mean they are, but.

Nadege Souvenir:

Right. Okay. Breakfast for dinner or dinner for breakfast?

Allison Hohn:

Probably breakfast for dinner, but mostly because occasionally my family would do that growing up, and so it's very nostalgic for me.

Nadege Souvenir:

Fair enough. All right. When you've got a recipe, do you follow it exactly or consider it more of a suggestion? They're more like guidelines anyway.

Allison Hohn:

Great question. And this actually speaks to my background. I always generally follow the recipe to the tee the first time because I need a control. I need to know how it was supposed to turn out, and then I will tweak it the next time if I deem it valuable and worthy enough or if I'm like, ugh. Although sometimes depending on what it is, you're like, we can use more garlic here.

Nadege Souvenir:

I love that.

Allison Hohn:

There's easy edits to make.

Nadege Souvenir:

Yeah. Mel, are you a recipe follower?

Melanie Hoffert:

I am-ish. I mean you answered that like a food scientist would I think. You have your control subject, is that how you say that? And then you can tweak. How about you?

Nadege Souvenir:

Oh yeah, I'm totally making... it is literally just like...

Allison Hohn:

You can do that in cooking. You can't do that in baking.

Nadege Souvenir:

Which is why I don't bake.

Allison Hohn:

Baking is a science.

Nadege Souvenir:

Baking is a science, and I stay very far away from that. But otherwise, I color with all the colors in my crayon box when I cook.

Allison Hohn:

I love it.

Melanie Hoffert:

We're going to dig into some questions, Allison. We really, like I said, we want to understand a little bit more about what you do and your organization. And for our listeners, I think we really need to kind of break down what is the ecosystem of Minnesota's food product development.

Nadege Souvenir:

I think the reality is most of us go to the store and we grab a product and we don't have to think about how it got there, why it's there, why different one isn't there, all of those things. And you're living in the space that gets that product to us. And I would just love to know a little bit more like at a high level, what does that ecosystem look like?

Allison Hohn:

Yeah, so this is a big broad question and I'm going to try and cover as much as I can, as fast as I can for everybody's sake.

Nadege Souvenir:

All right.

Allison Hohn:

So what's really fascinating about Minnesota is we have such large and plentiful legacy food companies here, General Mills, Land O'Lakes, Schwan's, Hormel, Post, Target as a retailer, it just continues and goes. So not only do we have the infrastructure for corporate R&D, but we also have the highest number of food scientists in the country centrally here.

Nadege Souvenir:

Really?

Allison Hohn:

Yep. Recovering food scientist. So here for that. But then we also have all the production ag that feeds that. And we also have the middle side, the processing side as you will. And so what's interesting about when you think about the entrepreneurial landscape here is so many people have exposure and are interested in food. It can be a low bar to get into. You can start making something in your kitchen, go to a farmer's market and start scaling from there.

But then it becomes really challenging because we have so many corporate folks here. As we all know, Minnesota is a wonderful place to raise a family, to live, you can have a really stable job. And so our risk level here is actually not that high. And so if you think about who's willing to make that jump, it often ends up being ex-General Mills or ex-Target folks who have the network. They know the people to call and often they have the generational wealth to do it. And so I would say historically we have seen a lot of white founders who have dominated this space. And then especially in the last five, ten years, everyone has family recipes, they have things they want to share.

And so we've seen a proliferation of Black and brown founders, especially in Minneapolis and North Minneapolis that come through NEON and MEDA and NDC and LEDC who have great products. And the problem is that they don't have the family, friends round to bridge them in their growth. And they don't have the acumen at times because they haven't worked in that large corporate and they don't have the contacts. So it ends up being really unfair in terms of who gets where faster. And so our legacy is both a strength and a limitation when it comes to the ecosystem and how it grows here. But from what we do, because we don't have consultants, we are formerly Grow North. So we live at the home center of entrepreneurship at the U of M along with Minn Cup. We started with a really lovely grant from General Mills to get us up and running and they continue to be a wonderful partner and sponsor of ours, but we really act as the front door.

So I'm here to help navigate because entrepreneurs are overwhelmed and confused. When do they do what? Who do they go for what? And we want to demystify that for them. And so I bring in, I talk to the leaders of all those orgs. We bring them all together. We want to figure out how can we best serve your entrepreneurs and everyone else. And we know an entrepreneur will have to use all of the resources of the ecosystem. They're not just going to go to one program and be done. That's not how it works. So we really try to be that front door, help navigate, and we do that through a lot of events. So we host about 60 events a year. Food Ag Ideas Week is our marquee event, October 9th and 10th this year at the Minnesota History Center. Actually heading there right after this to go do a walkthrough. And that's our major convening moment.

So it is not only industry folks and entrepreneurs, it is investors, lawyers, all the service providers like agency marketing, branding, professors, students, other nonprofit folks, government folks, everyone shows up and it's really the ultimate convening moment. And so, much of what we do is around providing the collisions of people to connect and connect with the right people who can help them at the right time. And so aside from all that programming, a fair amount of my role is actually meeting one-on-one with hundreds of entrepreneurs every year and hundreds of industry folks. So I have the mental map and can say, "Oh, this is who you are, this is what you're doing. You need help with this. Great. I'll make a warm intro here, a warm intro here. They'll be able to help you move your business along."

Melanie Hoffert:

So when you talk about ecosystem, you really mean ecosystem. You are tapped into all of these different folks who are moving ideas along. I'm curious, when you are meeting with these entrepreneurs, how are they finding you? You talked about someone who has that family recipe and they're really excited. And so what is the natural intersection where you come into their experience?

Allison Hohn:

It's a couple of different pathways, honestly, which is the least, which is unfortunate. It's probably the organic way where they're like entrepreneur help and who knows how our SEO is on for that and whether they stumble onto it. A lot of times it's through similar referrals. So it is like a two-way street where the Minnesota Department of Ag is a really close partner of ours. They're often the first stop because they have the licenses you need. They have a lot of some resources online that people go to. And so often if they connect with someone, they say, "Hey, also you should check out Naturally Minnesota. They have more resources, more events, more opportunity." And so that's a big way where people stumble upon us.

And then it's an influx of referrals. It's founder to founder, it's if someone is helping them, they'll say, oh, do you know about this? And oftentimes it's no. Awareness is our biggest hurdle at times. People just don't know we exist and they don't know everything that we do. And when they find us, they're like, "Oh my God, this is great. Where were you three, five years ago?" And I'm like, "I'm sorry." But yeah, that's one of the biggest...

The ecosystem here is almost one of the best kept secrets because there's so much here and so much help available, but it is hard to navigate. Especially on the two, I'll say every entrepreneur I talk to has two things they need, a place to manufacture. They're like, where can I get my product made and where can I get capital? Every single one.

Nadege Souvenir:

So just thinking of, I want to go back to, right, somebody's got that family recipe. Just thinking how you go from the family recipe, which is made with love and care and Grandma's kitchen and using whatever's available to you to something that ultimately needs to be produced in a regular, regimented, I can't think of words-

Allison Hohn:

Quality control, so it can end up on shelf.

Nadege Souvenir:

Like shelf stable, all of those things. Are there types of products that are better suited for that or can everything get there? I'm just trying to get from-

Allison Hohn:

We need a proxy example for you.

Nadege Souvenir:

Good soup. And then now everybody's eating it too.

Allison Hohn:

So many. It depends.

Nadege Souvenir:

I know. I'm just trying to take our listeners on a journey so that they can follow.

Allison Hohn:

Well, I'm trying to think of what would be.... Jams and jellies, and let's not do that one. Let's do pasta sauce.

Nadege Souvenir:

Oh, great.

Allison Hohn:

Because a lot of people have a sauce option that they love, grandma made. And so step one is, okay, where do I get the ingredients? And it's obviously not super economical to buy your ingredients at a grocery store. So most people will start by buying, either try to find wholesale or even Costco. Honestly, that's where most people start is buying in bulk at Costco. The sourcing journey of finding ingredients, that is actually one of the trickiest things for people to find is I don't need this much. So you don't meet minimum order quantities oftentimes. So sourcing growth is a big problem area for a lot of folks, but you have to find your ingredients and then you have to figure out a process.

And if you're making it at home, you have to get a license. They come and inspect your space. You have to tell them what your kill step is from a quality control standpoint. So are you heating it to a certain degree? So if you'd be cooking your sauce on the stove, you're going to have to hold it at a certain temperature for a certain amount of time. And if you think about canning, right? Same thing. And then how are you sterilizing your jars or whatever your things are, your packaging. But you also have to think about packaging. What is my packaging? What can I afford? What makes sense for my product? And I mean, people start with what is the cheapest, easiest thing I can do just to get an MVP out there? And that's what you see at the farmer's market.

Once you want to get into retail, that's where you have to really start thinking things through a bit more in terms of, okay, what is the sauce set at the grocery store? Everything's in glass jars. Is there a way for me to be differentiated or is it the flavor profile or is it my ingredients or is it the claims I can make on my sauce? And so this is a bad example because pasta sauce is so uniform, everybody has the same five SKUs. So sorry. But you have to really start thinking, what is your brand? What's your brand identity? Who's buying you? Because people, I think they assume everyone will love my product. Everyone tells me it's great, and it's like, that's fine, but you need to get really granular on who is it for. And so really having a good understanding of your brand, your consumer, how do you fit into your category? Is there white space? Is there not? Are you just a me too?

Because I can tell you your product has to taste good, you have to have a good brand. And what was the third one? There are three things. It's like you have to have these three. Oh, you have to have a point of differentiation. If you don't have those three, you can have some success, but not... And this is also an important question, what is the founder's desired outcome? A lot of times people just think of, I need to have an exit and I need to make the big exit to a big company. But it's like you can have a lifestyle brand and make a couple hundred grand a year and be very happy.

Melanie Hoffert:

Taking a little bit of a different direction. What is your relationship with the growers of food? Do you work with them? And then a deeper question, because I come from a farming family farm in the Red River Valley, and just thinking about agriculture and how massive of an operation it can be versus the people who are trying to grow smaller scale and the tension that exists there in Minnesota. I'd just be really curious your take on that.

Allison Hohn:

Yeah. So this is a very timely question. Last Tuesday we actually did a field day at A-Frame Farms in Dawson, Minnesota, which is about three hours. And we had a hundred people there. It was an incredible day. We went to four different fields, and it's a regenerative farm. So the farmer, there is no till. They do certain crop rotation practices and cover crops and things. So they can be doing nitrogen fixing, carbon fixing, protecting the land, improving the watershed. It's really about soil and water health practices. But what's super fun is that farmer supplies Patagonia provisions. They make kernza beer, SimpleMills gets their sunflowers from them. Lil Bucks is a buckwheat snack company out of San Diego. And they actually brought all of these teams. I mean we had probably 20 or 30 people fly in to come to this field day and tour around. And then we had a panel with the farmer, Luke, who's incredible, and the leaders of some of these orgs talking about what it takes to create the demand for these crops and how do they de-risk it for the farmer.

So the tension here is it has been all about efficiency, right? Get the most yield out of the land as possible at any price. And we had Norman Borlaug, father of the Green Revolution at the U of M. So Minnesota has a deep history in optimization. What's happened now is we continue to lose topsoil. We continue to have very unhealthy soil. There's not a lot of life in it. When I, by life, I mean bacteria and everything. A good soil aggregate will have earthworms and all types of things that'll stick together. It's living. It is a living organism. And what's great is these regenerative practices help build that back up so you can actually build topsoil if you've been losing it.

But what's hard is that the incentive system in the farming system does not support going to these practices. There's no crop insurance if you're doing different crops. So you have to prove out year over year yield for three to five year, I don't know the exact number, don't quote me, before they'll even consider giving you crop insurance. There's not a lot of education, there's not a lot of insurance. And what's really fascinating is the societal pressure in farming communities on whether or not you adhere to traditional conventional farming practices or you do this and if you do this, you are like a lone wolf in these communities.

And so what's hard also is most of the innovation in the agriculture space in Ag Tech is all around these large farms. It makes sense. You can apply at scale. You want to get the most efficiency. It's precision ag, it's everything. And so a lot of the new innovation is not geared towards these small farms.

Nadege Souvenir:

A lot of the guests that we've talked to talked about how things change because of COVID, because of in the Twin Cities, the murder of George Floyd and what people are paying attention to. And have you noticed any changes in Minnesota's food ecosystem at any points that you really hope keep going or things you want to keep giving life to so that they're not temporary changes as a result of the last couple of years?

Allison Hohn:

In terms of what has emerged locally that I would like to see continue, every corporate made big promises after the murder of George Floyd and I actually started in this role the day after George Floyd was murdered. So it was a really interesting time to come into a community and an ecosystem that was reeling because everyone is so on the ground in entrepreneur support organizations. Everyone is out in the community, they're out there with the people.

And there has been a lot of commitment to we want to support diverse founders, especially Black and brown founders in terms of either access or capital or anything in that space. A lot of the large companies, some have done better than others. And I think living up to those promises, we have a program that we started in 2020 and it's a diverse founder trade show where we take 15 to 30, normally about 15, and we bring all of the buyers and retailers from local and regional and they all get a four-minute pitch.

And it's a way for folks who did not have the connections to say, hey, how can we make sure you get an introduction? And we know it's not a, I meet you once. And I'm like, yes, your product nailed it. We're going. It takes multiple meetings with a buyer to actually get on shelf and they have timelines that they go through and do all of that. But getting practice, getting in front of folks, making those initial connections, how can we be the conduit for access and on-ramps into the different ways that they can build their business?

So I've seen more and more programs like that pop up and just really around capital access as well. Connect Up Institute does a fabulous job. They've been more and more involved with CPG founders, and so they're trying to figure out how do we bridge that gap? Especially, there's a specific stage where it's really challenging to find capital because you are not proven out enough for people to see a track record and you're not mature enough to get VC money. So you get caught in this valley of death of capital. And even though we have a lot of very well-to-do people here who've made a lot of money in various industries, everyone here is still very conservative with their capital and they like to invest in med tech, health tech or high-tech companies that have quicker returns. You can make good money in food. It just takes patience.

Nadege Souvenir:

I listened to you talk about what you do, how you're meeting with individual founders, how you're meeting with ecosystem players. This is not a small job, but if memory serves, I mean you don't have that big a team doing your work. And I would love to pull on a thread that's less about the ecosystem and more about leadership in roles that have big outsize impact. But I mean your capacity, yeah, you're lean.

Allison Hohn:

Yeah. I wish I could either clone myself or have... The hard part, right? Any ESOs, entrepreneur support organizations, in Minnesota, we all have to fundraise to pay our own salary and to pay our programming. So I would love to hire another person, but that means I have to fundraise an extra a hundred to 125K a year to cover not only their salary, but their benefits and everything via the U. And even though we live at the U and they're our fiscal sponsor and there's a lot of wonderful benefits and tangible benefits of living there, the U doesn't directly give us any money. So that is where we have to go. I actually applied for a Saint Paul [inaudible 00:24:45] .

Nadege Souvenir:

All right, noted.

Allison Hohn:

That one went in last week. Shameless plug. But so a lot of it is around what is your strategy? What is your priorities? And I'm a person who gets excited by a lot of things and I want to say yes, and I want to partner with everyone. And so I would love to have another person run all of our programming and then I can focus on the higher level, like the community, the ecosystem connecting, because we're all wanting to support the same people. We're all wanting to see the same changes and we all to use a U of M quote, get on the boat and row in the same direction, right Ski-U-Mah. But that takes time and you have to build trust with these communities. And coming in, I think what's been hard is a lot of communities directly impacted by George Floyd, they've said, "We've tried to dabble and we're not getting the support we need, so we're going to stay in our community and do that."

And that makes sense. If you've gotten burned, if you're not here, I would do the exact same thing. I'd be like, we tried, it didn't work out. That's fine. I'll do me. You do. But it's unfortunate because there's so many resources they could get access to, but they need direct support. They need that one-on-one, that real consulting handheld.

One org that is doing a fabulous job of this is 4AP, 4 Access Partners. They work with brands in the zero to 1 million space and they bring people along and sit down with them and work with them. Incredible organization, partner of ours, cannot say enough good things about them. And so they're ones that are doing the work on the ground. And that's the hard part. I don't have a crew of consultants who can do that. I certainly have sat down and let's look at your pitch deck or walk me through this or whatever. But when it comes down to your point of time management, that's where you get torn between execution and then higher level strategy and work in the ecosystem that happens honestly, under the radar.

Melanie Hoffert:

I have a closing question for myself. Well, it's a two-parter. In hearing what you do. And it's just been really wonderful to learn more about your organization and all of the work because what I'm hearing is this really deep theme of inclusion, making this on-ramp much more open to a wider variety of people and communities, which is the work that we do at the foundation. So it's very aligned with what you're focusing on.

So similar to Nadege asking about being a leader in this space, and this might be hard to encapsulate it doing so much, but just for anybody who's really trying to open the table, increase the seats for more people, any thoughts you would have about how to do that in different organizations, different industries, to really crack open the access points?

Allison Hohn:

Lots of thoughts. First off, one thing we'll be doing at our conference, the last session of the day is going to be a fail forward session of having founders share sometimes where they've failed and had to figure it out and recover. But that's really the first half. The second half is around, we as a culture in Minnesota, have our Minnesota nice culture and it's very surface. People only go to the people they know. They're only comfortable talking to those people. And if they actually randomly meet at an event and they have a connection with someone, they'll be like, "Oh my God, yeah, this is great. I'd love to help you." And some follow through, some don't. I will say the biggest thing people can do is genuinely offer help and follow through.

If you connect with someone and they say, "I'm struggling with this. Do you know anyone?" And you say, "Yeah, I do. I'll make an intro." Make the intro. Don't let it fall to the wayside. People ask me, what makes a successful entrepreneur? And honestly, it's follow through, it's execution because you can have a not great idea or a not great product, but if you hustle and you follow through, you'll still have a decent business regardless of whatever industry you're in. You see a lot of people, you're like, "How are you a millionaire? What am I doing wrong?" But often it's follow through and execution. And so I would say if you want to get involved, if you want to open the doors, legitimately, physically open the doors. Show up. That is a big one. The downfall of COVID is it gave everyone a very convenient excuse not to show up, to opt out at the last minute, "Oh, I'm not feeling good."

And it's like, again, be safe. Take care of your family, number one for sure. But every large networking event, I can't tell you how many people come out to me after. And with this tone of surprise, "This was so great. I met so many interesting people. It's really fun to connect. I hadn't seen these people in a long time." And they're just so shocked. Like OMG, human nature trumps everything. We're animals.

Melanie Hoffert:

We've forgotten.

Allison Hohn:

People have forgotten that we're animals and we are community and we want to connect and all of those things. And it always blows my mind because just getting people to show up is one of the hardest things to do because everyone is so time strapped.

Melanie Hoffert:

Well, that's a nice headline. It's really because the Minnesota nice is all of the nice words, but really, really following through with action. And then my two-parter was, do you get to taste things as you're working with all these wonderful --I want to know, how much do you get to sample?

Allison Hohn:

Yes, yes and no. So I will say in my previous roles as an R&D scientist, I basically got paid to eat. It was a great gig. If you're like, I just want to eat for a living, be a food scientist, and then pick a good company that has products you like. Dangerous slope. The wonderful thing is if you help a founder, they're often so grateful. They're like, "What can I send you? Take a product. Take a sample." And so it is fun to be able to get to try everybody's products. The pride people have in their faces, which having done development and being able to see your product in the wild on shelf, there's nothing quite like it.

Melanie Hoffert:

Oh, I'm sure.

Allison Hohn:

It's a wonderful moment and a wonderful feeling. So seeing them be so excited and just so proud is great.

Nadege Souvenir:

No, I can't imagine. I mean, you see people being proud when a five-year-old makes breakfast for Mom and brings that tray forward and it's cereal with juice in it and it's terrible, but they're so proud and so it's so innate in us the sharing of relationships through food. What I'm hearing you say is it doesn't change when the ecosystem gets bigger. It's just maybe even magnifying how people feel.

Allison Hohn:

And I think that's such... I mean, food is so relatable. Everyone needs to eat, everyone needs to eat. And every culture and family and individual has food stories and how they share through food. And this is a meaningful dish to me. We used to make breakfast for dinner occasionally in my family. I think it was when my mom was like, I'm tired not making anything real and we have this, it's easy. But it was still a moment that you did and a ritual you did with your family. So that's where it's really fun because it is so personal and you get to just see that blossom for people, and that's really fun.

Nadege Souvenir:

I love that. As we're winding down and we're already in the spirit of joy, outside of the food space, what brings you joy?

Allison Hohn:

Oh, great. Well, this is where my adrenaline problem comes in from.

Nadege Souvenir:

Right, we're ready for it.

Allison Hohn:

So yeah, driving fast in fast cars brings me joy. The best part about my job is connecting people. That is what I love to do. I coached soccer, like club level girls' soccer for a decade, age eight to 16, and was able to see not only progression of player and progression of teams, but these are maturing children and maturing young adults. And being able to see that happen over time was so rewarding and so fun. And so I really loved mentoring and coaching, and this role has allowed me to do that at a more mass scale, but also with my technical knowledge.

So I played soccer in college. I still play for funsies. I'm way slow now, unfortunately. And I was bummed the US women got knocked out of the World Cup early. It is what it is. But being able to connect people, whether it's in work or just meeting random strangers, like you meet someone and it's like, "Oh, tell me more about what you're doing. Oh, that's cool. Have you thought of done this? Do you know this person?" It's an innate thing for me, and that makes me happy and brings me joy. Hosting people brings me joy. I love hosting. My love language is cooking food for people. So it's hard not to escape this area.

But also, I mean, I go to MNUFC games all the time. So going and being in that atmosphere and seeing that happen brings me joy.

Nadege Souvenir:

That's wonderful.

Allison Hohn:

Yeah.

Nadege Souvenir:

Well, thank you so much for spending some time with us today.

Allison Hohn:

Thank you for having me. This has been great.

Nadege Souvenir:

Wow.

Melanie Hoffert:

Yes.

Nadege Souvenir:

There was just so much to unpack there. Okay. First of all, do I say that all the time in every episode or do we just always have awesome guests?

Melanie Hoffert:

I think we have awesome guests.

Nadege Souvenir:

Okay.

Melanie Hoffert:

Yes.

Nadege Souvenir:

But also, maybe I say it every time.

Melanie Hoffert:

You dom but I mean there's a lot to unpack and I'm hungry. I just have to admit that we did have lunch, but now I need a snack.

Nadege Souvenir:

Right. Because we've been talking about food for the last however long, yeah.

Melanie Hoffert:

What stood out to you in all of these layers that we need to unpack?

Nadege Souvenir:

Honestly so much, but the specificity of the show up and follow through, because that has nothing to do with the food ecosystem. That has nothing to do with anything in particular. It just has so much to do with how we as people engage with each other and it's just really show up for people and follow through.

Melanie Hoffert:

100%. And I think the other thing, and I love that you're talking about how applicable this to just generally how we can support each other. A lot of what Allison said, she was talking about two things that exist in so many arenas. There's the personal story, experience, and idea, and then there are the systems we need to navigate. And the systems that work for some people quite easily because they've been exposed and then the systems that just do not work for everyone. And so she, in her work, is I think doing that showing up piece and is bringing in other partners who are showing up. So I think there's a lot that we can take from that too, wherever we sit in our many places of privilege.

Nadege Souvenir:

Yeah, I think so. And I think the whole idea that food, the ecosystem, I mean food is so personal.

Melanie Hoffert:

It is.

Nadege Souvenir:

Right? At some level, when you're talking about supply chains and systems and accelerating and magnifying and all the words that I don't know that I'm supposed to be saying.

Melanie Hoffert:

Yep, I'm following you.

Nadege Souvenir:

You're beyond that. But at its core, we all need to eat.

Melanie Hoffert:

We do.

Nadege Souvenir:

And often whenever you have conversations with folks about what is culture, what is one of the very first items that somebody will say when you say, "Help me define culture."

Melanie Hoffert:

Oh, yeah. It's all about the food and the ritual.

Nadege Souvenir:

Yeah. So it's just some of the innovation that she talked about and the changes that are needed and the ways to help founders bring that to a broader scale are just so very important because they're so critical to who we are.

Melanie Hoffert:

I agree.

Nadege Souvenir:

And on that note, I think we got to go grab something to eat, right?

Melanie Hoffert:

Let's go get a snack. Yes.

Nadege Souvenir:

Thank you for listening to I So Appreciate You! You can find us on Facebook at I So Appreciate You Podcast and on Twitter and Instagram @SoAppreciateYou.

Melanie Hoffert:

We'd also appreciate you taking a moment to write us a review. And if you like our show, be sure to follow I So Appreciate You! on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you're listening to us right now.

Nadege Souvenir:

Have a question or topic suggestion? Email us at podcast@spmcf.org. Thank you for listening to I So Appreciate You!